Hatch Show Prints

One of the exhibits at the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and the one I was most geeked about when I visited recently, is the Hatch Show Prints collection. The Hatch brothers started printing advertisements in the late 1800s, and continued to design posters for various industries throughout the 1900s through today. The prints were made using hand-crafted wood blocks, many of which were displayed at the exhibit in Seattle. As anyone who has gone to the Renaissance Festival with me knows, I love getting up close to anything printing press related, and this was no different. I could have spent hours staring at the details in the giant wood blocks, and did spend a lot of time going back and forth between the wood blocks and the prints themselves.

I love the simple aesthetic of the prints, too, with simple color schemes, straight lines and big letters. It's much easier to go wild with design with digital tools -- not so much when you're carving your design into wood and putting one color on the print at a time.

If I ever find myself accidentally in Nashville, I'll be okay. I have something I want to do, and that is visit the Hatch print shop. Today it's a working letterpress/museum/archive/tourist attraction.